A comprehensive look at sprawl in America By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY Los Angeles, whose legendary traffic congestion and spread-out development have epitomized suburban sprawl for decades, isn't so sprawling after all.
sprawl (sprôl) v. To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion, n. Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from new housing on the outskirts of a city.
In fact, Portland, Ore., the metropolitan area that has enacted the nation’s toughest anti-growth laws, sprawls more. Worse than either of them is Nashville, which is the nation’s most sprawling metro of 1 million people or more. Those are some of the findings of a USA TODAY study that analyzes population trends over the past decade in the nation’s 271 metropolitan areas. Across the country, people are debating the issue of sprawl as governments try to reconcile growing needs for new housing and commercial development with demands to protect open space. The newspaper’s study shows why: 83% of metro areas are more sprawling now than in 1990. To quantify sprawl, USA TODAY developed an index that analyzes how densely developed a metro is today and how that changed during the ’90s. The result is the USA TODAY Sprawl Index. Some findings from the analysis defy conventional wisdom. The index shows that: • A boom in population doesn’t necessarily trigger sprawl. In fact, sprawl can occur when the population in a metropolitan area is shrinking.
Population and sprawl
Only 12 of the 271 metros had 90% or more of their populations in urbanized areas; 61 had more than 80%.
• A number of small metropolitan areas (pop. 250,000 or fewer) in some of the more pastoral corners of the country sprawl more than large metro areas. In fact, most of the nation’s major metro areas (pop. 1 million or more) are experiencing the least sprawl. Other key findings: • The availability of water is a major factor in limiting or allowing sprawl. For example, in a booming desert city such as Las Vegas, the scarcity of water forces development to stay close to the city’s edge — and its municipal water lines — and not leapfrog open space. • Geography is another major factor limiting or allowing sprawl. Oceans, mountains and other barriers can force a metro to grow compactly while flat land can allow development of any kind.
Geography of sprawl
Geography is a factor in either limiting or allowing sprawl. Oceans, mountains and other barriers can force a metro to grow compactly while flat land can allow development of any kind.
The ocean and mountains encircling Los Angeles are powerful anti-sprawl forces today. This once-sprawling city is running out of room and turning inward to grow. But in the Southeast, few natural barriers limit growth. Unrelenting sprawl along Interstates 85 and 20 is creating a “string city” that stretches 600 miles between Raleigh, N.C., and Birmingham, Ala. The forces of water and geography are evident in the sprawl index. Sixteen of the most sprawling big metros are east of the Mississippi. Four of the top five are in the Southeast: Nashville; Charlotte; Greensboro, N.C.; and Atlanta. • A lack of regional government planning can foster sprawl. In metros in the Northeast and Midwest, dozens of local governments regulate development. The result is fragmented planning. Efforts by local and state governments to restrict sprawl are growing but have had limited impact. Measuring sprawl The USA TODAY Sprawl Index is based on a simple, measurable definition of sprawl: population density. Each metropolitan’s index score is based on two density measurements: • Population density today. Density is the percentage of a metro area’s population that lives in “urbanized areas.” The Census Bureau defines urbanized areas as those parts of a metro with 1,000 or more residents per square mile. • Change in population density during the 1990s. The second component of the index measures how much a metro’s percentage in urbanized areas increased or decreased from 1990 to 1999. The metropolitan areas were ranked 1 through 271 on each measurement (lower numbers represent less sprawl). The two rankings were added to produce each metro area’s sprawl index score. The highest possible score is 542; the lowest is 2. For example, in the Louisville metro area, 76% of the population lived in urbanized areas in 1999. That gave Louisville a rank of 85 among the 271 metros. In 1990, 79.6% lived in urbanized areas. Louisville’s 4.5% drop during the ’90s gave it a rank of 221. Adding those two rankings of 85 and 221 produced a sprawl index score of 306. Of the 271 metros, 108 have higher numbers than Louisville, which means they sprawl more, and 162 have lower numbers and sprawl less. More space than necessary? Because sprawl occurs in different ways and at different rates across the country, it’s difficult for people and governments to agree on how to deal with it. When the non-profit Pew Center for Civic Journalism asked voters to name the most important problem in their community, sprawl and traffic tied for first with crime and violence. Each was cited by 18% of those surveyed. Issues such as education and health and medicine trailed far behind.
Robert Hanashiro, USATODAY
Los Angeles has a surprisingly low sprawl index score of 78.
Experts say that finding a common definition of whether a metro area is sprawling — or not — is a necessary first step toward helping people understand how to deal with it. Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines sprawl as spreading out in an awkward way “so as to take up more space than is necessary.” As with most discussions involving sprawl, though, the meaning of “more space than is necessary” is debatable. Robert Lang, director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation, says, “There’s a big public policy imperative to do something about what people call sprawl. It would be nice to have a definition.” By using population density as the definition of sprawl, the USA TODAY index is able to rank a metropolitan area’s sprawl whether its population is increasing or decreasing. And comparing population density in 1990 and 1999 shows how metro areas are growing. Armed with that knowledge, government officials, developers and residents can debate what measures — if any — they should take. A love-hate relationship Across the country, the desire for new, affordable housing and commercial space creates sprawl. Cheap land outside urbanized areas allows people to buy their own homes. It also provides an escape for people who perceive only downsides to life in the city — from crime and low-quality public education to high housing costs.
Sprawl is blamed for:
•social isolation and obesity — people driving everywhere •asthma and global warming — auto emissions •flooding and erosion — too much pavement • the demise of small farms — developers buying their land •extinction of wildlife — natural areas being overrun by development.
At the same time, people want more parks and wildlife preserves. They want more green space, farms and unbroken natural scenery. As development pushes ever farther from the urbanized areas of many metropolitans, residents are becoming increasingly fed up with traffic jams and strip malls that result. Many are calling on the government to stop the sprawl that their very move to the suburbs helped create. Since 1997, 22 states have enacted some type of land-use law designed to rein in sprawl. In 1999 alone, lawmakers introduced 1,000 bills in state legislatures, and they passed more than 200. In fast-growing counties, people are electing “smart-growth” candidates to public office who advocate restricting development. Americans are even willing to spend their money to protect green space. In the summer of 1999, eight homeowners in Warren Township, N.J., spent $125,000 to buy seven acres near their homes to keep the land wooded. Around the same time, about 400 families in the affluent Cleveland suburbs of Chagrin Falls and Bentleyville contributed $300,000 to preserve 62 acres.
Fighting sprawl
Nashville has the highest sprawl index score among big metros: 478. Anti-sprawl activists have been battling to block the construction of a beltway around Nashville. There are worries over environmental impact and concern that a belt- way will encourage more sprawl.
The debate over how to control sprawl often pits the public good against self-interest. Most people agree that protecting natural resources and open space is important, but few are willing to give up the right to do what they want with their own land. Some free-market thinkers say the sprawl debate is much ado about nothing. The country has plenty of space, says Sam Staley, director of the Urban Futures Program for Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. The 80% of Americans who live in metro areas should have the right to choose between a condo in the city and a home on a big lot in the suburbs. “Quality of life. It starts with that,” Staley says. “Then the question becomes, ‘Does sprawl compromise quality of life?’ I don’t think it does because people are choosing to move to these communities all the time. There are alternatives to sprawl in every major city in the United States, but people are choosing not to return to those neighborhoods.” As a result, sprawl remains a national dilemma. People are fed up with it, yet they like what it provides. And they don’t like the alternative to sprawl: Living in a more crowded urban environment. As communities debate what to do about it, they can’t agree on what sprawl is, or even whether it’s good or bad. Sprawl is blamed for social isolation and obesity (people driving everywhere), asthma and global warming (auto emissions), flooding and erosion (too much pavement), the demise of small farms (developers buying their land) and the extinction of wildlife (natural areas being overrun by development). At the same time, it is credited with creating safe neighborhoods, affordable housing and good schools. In short, a chance to live the American dream. Natural barriers A key finding of the sprawl index is the impact of geography and water. Mountains and other natural barriers and limited supplies of water have prevented many Western cities from sprawling; flat land and plentiful water have allowed most Eastern cities to grow as they please. As a result, most Western metro areas have fairly low sprawl index scores and many Eastern cities have high scores.
Geographic sprawl
Four of the top five sprawling cities are in the Southeast: Nashville; Charlotte, N.C.; Greensboro, N.C.; and Atlanta. And 16 of the top 17 are east of the Mississippi.
In the West, a metro area’s water often comes from one source. New growth tends to occur right at the edge of existing development so that it can tap into the municipal water supply. In the East, a developer can put a subdivision miles beyond the end of a municipal water line and drill wells and install septic tanks. This ability to leapfrog open spaces leads to sprawl. Mountains, oceans and other natural barriers also prevent development from spreading. Once a metro area butts up against them, its population can increase only if development becomes denser. Single-family lots become smaller, and condominium and apartment buildings go up. The Los Angeles metropolitan area has a population of 16 million and seems sprawling to many. But if the Atlanta metro area (pop. 3.8 million) had as many people as Los Angeles and the same population density Atlanta has now, it would occupy many more square miles than Los Angeles does.
America's top sprawling city
Ocala, Fla., has the highest sprawl score among all metros — 536. It is in the center of northern Florida, surrounded by Gainesville to the north, Daytona Beach to the east and Orlando to the south. It sprawled at a fast rate in the ’90s, and it was one of the most sprawling metros by the end of the decade. This put it at the top of the index. “Ocala is kind of in the cross hairs of sprawl in different directions,” Lang says. “It’s getting the spillover effect from these bigger metros.”
That point is reflected in the sprawl index scores for the two metros. Los Angeles has a score of 78, which is even lower than metropolitan New York’s (82), which is known for its skyscraper-studded downtown. Atlanta has a sprawl index score of 392. In the Atlanta metro region, 72.9% lived in urbanized areas in 1990, and by 1999, that figure had dropped to 67.4%. Throughout the ’90s, Atlanta continued to sprawl as people moving to Atlanta chose less-populated parts of the metropolitan area. In Los Angeles, 94.9% lived in urbanized areas in 1990. By 1999, that percentage had dropped slightly, to 94.3%. In the West, growth occurs in an orderly fashion because it’s tethered to those water lines. In the East, especially the Southeast, growth can be disorderly. Developers can buy cheap rural land and build on it because they don’t have to worry about public water and sewer facilities. This leapfrog development consumes vast amounts of land and traps green space — pastures, cropland and woods — between developments. A population that occupies 1,000 square miles in a metro area constrained by natural forces can occupy many times that in another. This untamed ability to sprawl has produced rapidly merging metropolitan areas along I-85 and I-20 between Raleigh, N.C. (index score: 271), and Birmingham, Ala. (323). Development there has unfurled from big urban centers such as Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta to the rural towns in between.
“In general, you’ll find that the cities that look like the poster children of sprawl in the West are less sprawling than we think,” says Robert Lang, director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation.
Call them “countrified cities,” Lang says. “It’s easy when you just develop across a series of off-ramps to never develop any cohesion.” The sprawl index list of big metros (pop. 1 million or more) especially shows how the availability of land and water has affected growth in the Southeast. Nashville (index score: 478) is No. 1 on the list. Charlotte (454); Greensboro, N.C., (437); and Atlanta (392) are in the top five. Four others are in the top 15: Memphis (329); Orlando (290); Raleigh (271); and Washington (261). Miami-Fort Lauderdale (69) is a big metro in the region that is not high on the sprawl index. Miami shares the fate of cities in the West. Geography pins it into a 25-mile wide area between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades. It ranks on the sprawl index right above San Diego (66), which is confined to 30 miles between ocean and mountains. The availability of cheap land in the Southeast and the Midwest also has turned many small metros (pop. 250,000 or fewer) into major engines of sprawl. These communities appeal to companies and individuals that want cheap land and want to escape the congestion of big metros. They’re also close to major urban centers — and their jobs, services and entertainment. Examples include Janesville, Wis. (263), west of Milwaukee, and St. Cloud, Minn. (231), which is just outside Minneapolis. Man-made barriers The effect of politics and government on sprawl can be seen best in metropolitan Portland, Ore. For years, Portland has fought to prevent the sprawl it saw shape Los Angeles. In 1973, Portland established an urban growth boundary to stop development and preserve open space beyond a certain line. The boundary encouraged denser development inside it.
Containing sprawl
Similar to Portland, dozens of local governments in the Northeast and Midwest regulate development. The result — fragmented planning that has had limited impact to date.
However, Portland’s sprawl index score of 221 puts in roughly in the middle of the list of big metros. One reason: Growth is escaping the control of the Portland Metropolitan Council, a regional board of three counties and 24 cities that set up the boundary. Developers are jumping over land that is under the council’s jurisdiction and building on land beyond it. Growth is occurring to the south in Salem, Ore., and to the north across the state line in Vancouver, Wash. Both cities are part of the Portland metropolitan area, as defined by the Census Bureau, and are within easy commuting distance of Portland.
Bob Riha, Jr., USATODAY
Heading toward Las Vegas on Interstate 15.
Las Vegas (159) is an example of the impact of both natural forces and government restraints. The nation’s gambling capital is gaining people at a faster pace than Atlanta. Unlike Atlanta, Las Vegas is not sprawling across miles and miles of open land. That’s because the metro area is in a desert and has limited water. It’s also hemmed in by mountains and vast amounts of federally owned land, including Nellis Air Force Base and Lake Mead National Recreation Area. “Las Vegas has an urban growth boundary. It’s called federal land,” says Bill Fulton of Solimar Research Group, an urban research and planning firm in Ventura, Calif. Las Vegas’ population has grown 60% in the past decade to 1.4 million, but more than three-quarters of those new residents moved into urbanized areas. Las Vegas has experienced orderly growth. New development has occurred at the edge of old, rather than leapfrogging open space, as in Atlanta.
Powerful cultural forces
Racial tensions and urban decay fueled much of the flight to the suburbs in metro areas in the Midwest and Northeast. Today, those metros rank high on the USA TODAY Sprawl Index. On the list of big metros, Grand Rapids, Mich. (357); Indianapolis (299); and Cincinnati (292) rank among the top 15. They’re all highly segregated areas, according to several studies of Census data from 1990.
“By many measures, the Midwest has both the highest racial segregation and the most-concentrated poverty at the cores,” says George Galster, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “That centrifugal push makes it possible for developers to offer ever-more distant alternatives to ‘urban problems.’.”
Local politics also contributes to sprawl in these regions. In the Northeast, metros are made up of many municipalities, which makes it harder to develop a regional growth plan. The same is true in the Midwest, a region settled by Northeasterners who brought with them a tradition of town meetings and local control. Metro Detroit has 280 local governments; metropolitan New York has more than 560.
“Each of them can adopt their separate zoning and housing and land-use codes,” Galster says.
These disparate interests work against regional planning and promote sprawl. One municipality can restrict growth, but if a neighboring town welcomes it, sprawl continues. Deceptive nature of sprawl Often, the debate over sprawl and what to do — if anything — to control it comes down to perception. If you look out on Charlotte from a downtown high-rise, trees dominate the land outside the tight downtown skyline. But the forest is just an illusion because development is hidden beneath the foliage.
Population and sprawl
225 of the 271 metros sprawled more as the share of their populations living in urbanized areas dropped.
That’s true of many places on the East Coast, where flat land and dense trees mask sprawl. Lang points to metropolitan Boston (205), which ranks with Minneapolis (203) and Detroit (208) as average among big metros on the sprawl index. “People say, ‘Boston is the densest place I know,’ but you don’t see the two-acre and three-acre lots out in the suburbs because of the trees,” he says. “In Los Angeles, they see everything because there are no trees.” Of course there are trees, but in a semiarid climate like Southern California’s, vegetation is not as naturally lush. In the West, any development on treeless hillsides is in plain view. Many Western cities also appear sprawling because of the way they are designed. Los Angeles has single-family homes stretching for miles. Away from downtown, few high-rises break up the monotony. “For some people, that’s sprawl,” says Rolf Pendall, a planning professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. But population density is the key determinant of sprawl. Those single-family homes in Los Angeles are on very small lots. In the East, older metropolitans appear to sprawl less because their packed, 19th-century cores and tall buildings form an image of density. But sprawl still exists. It’s just occurring miles from downtown. “Sprawl is so multifaceted and takes on so many different forms across the country that it’s probably going to require different solutions,” Lang says. Struggle for solutions Everyone is pushing for “smart” growth, but no one can agree on what “dumb” growth is.
Eye on sprawl
• Smart Growth America, a non-profit coalition of anti-sprawl groups, soon will publish a study trying to quantify sprawl. • George Galster, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University, is looking at six dimensions of sprawl, including the density and concentration of housing in various areas. • Rolf Pendall, of Cornell University, is using an Agriculture Department survey taken every five years that measures how much land on the fringe of metropolitans is being developed.
Some planners call for more roads as a way to ease traffic congestion. Others say building or widening roads creates a bigger traffic mess and encourages even more development. Some advocate single-family houses on big lots. Others insist the solution is more apartments and small homes to accommodate more people on less land. Some say housing should be built close to mass transit and within walking distance of stores, schools and other services to get cars off the road. Others argue that Americans don’t want to live in a more crowded urban setting or give up their cars. Some want strict growth boundaries. Others say that limiting development pushes up housing prices and reduces the stock of affordable housing. They agree on one thing, though: Municipalities must plan better. Faced with mounting pressure from residents, environmentalists and other interest groups and local officials, eight states have approved comprehensive, growth-management plans that require local governments to prevent development where roads and sewers don’t exist. In 1998, Tennessee required municipalities to set up urban-growth boundaries. In 1999, Georgia set up a regional transportation authority that has veto power over major construction in a 13-county area in and around Atlanta. But most other states that have been dragged into a problem that’s usually left to local government are sticking to laws that get little resistance. They’re setting aside funds to buy open space, farmland or forests. Some are creating tax incentives for landowners to donate development rights to the state or conservationists. Even as planners and elected officials grapple with sprawl, individual choices and lifestyles ultimately shape development in this country. Latanya Wells, 37, grew up in inner-city Detroit and never thought of leaving. “It was clean. You felt safe. People were neighborly,” she says. But over the years, her neighborhood steadily changed for the worse. By the time she finally left in 1997, “you barely knew your neighbors or spoke to your neighbors. There were bars on the windows.” Wells, her sister and brother — all teachers in Detroit public schools — did what millions of Americans have done for decades: They moved to the suburbs. They briefly considered, but rejected, housing going up in some of the most distressed neighborhoods downtown, part of the city’s effort to bring people back to the city. “We looked around the neighborhood and thought: We’re going to be scared to go to our cars,” she says. “It’s still rough down there.” They chose Southfield, 13 miles from their jobs in the city. An older suburb packed with strip malls and lookalike homes, Southfield is a sprawling eyesore to some. But not to Wells. “It’s a matter of perception,’’ she says. “I like it.”
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Growing concern over the NYPD's counterterrorism methods
By Scott Stewart
In response to the 9/11 attacks, the New York Police Department (NYPD) established its own Counter-Terrorism Bureau and revamped its Intelligence Division. Since that time, its methods have gone largely unchallenged and have been generally popular with New Yorkers, who expect the department to take measures to prevent future attacks.
Preventing terrorist attacks requires a very different operational model than arresting individuals responsible for such attacks, and the NYPD has served as a leader in developing new, proactive approaches to police counterterrorism.
However, it has been more than 10 years since the 9/11 attacks, and the NYPD is now facing growing concern over its counterterrorism activities. There is always an uneasy equilibrium between security and civil rights, and while the balance tilted toward security in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it now appears to be shifting back.
This shift provides an opportunity to examine the NYPD’s activities, the pressure being brought against the department and the type of official oversight that might be imposed. Under Pressure Reports that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and Counter-Terrorism Bureau engage in aggressive, proactive operations are nothing new. STRATFOR has written about them since 2004, and several books have been published on the topic. Indeed, police agencies from all over the world travel to New York to study the NYPD’s approach, which seems to have been quite effective.
Criticism of the department’s activities is nothing new, either. Civil liberties groups have expressed concern over security methods instituted after 9/11, and Leonard Levitt, who writes a column on New York police activities for the website NYPD Confidential, has long been critical of the NYPD and its commissioner, Ray Kelly. Associated Press reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have written a series of investigative reports that began on Aug. 24 detailing “covert” NYPD activities, such as mapping the Muslim areas of New York. This was followed by the Aug. 31 publication of what appears to be a leaked NYPD PowerPoint presentation detailing the activities of the Intelligence Division’s Demographics Unit.
In the wake of these reports, criticism of the NYPD’s program has reached a new level. Members of the New York City Council expressed concern that their constituents were being unjustly monitored. Six New York state senators asked the state attorney general to investigate the possibility of “unlawful covert surveillance operations of the Muslim community.” A group of civil rights lawyers also asked a U.S. district judge in Manhattan to force the NYPD to publicize any records of such a program and to issue a court order to prevent their destruction. In response to the AP investigation, two members of Congress, Reps. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Rush Holt, D-N.J., asked the Justice Department to investigate. The heat is on.
After an Oct. 7 hearing regarding NYPD intelligence and counterterrorism operations, New York City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Peter Vallone said, “That portion of the police department’s work should probably be looked at by a federal monitor.”
Following Vallone’s statement, media reports cited Congressional and Obama administration officials saying they have no authority to monitor the NYPD.
While Vallone claims the City Council does not have the expertise to oversee the department’s operations, and the federal government says that it lacks the jurisdiction, it is almost certain that the NYPD will eventually face some sort of new oversight mechanisms and judicial review of its counterterrorism activities. New York City and the Terrorist Threat While 9/11 had a profound effect on the world and on U.S. foreign policy, it had an overwhelming effect on New York City itself. New Yorkers were willing to do whatever it took to make sure such an attack did not happen again, and when Kelly was appointed police commissioner in 2002, he proclaimed this as his primary duty (his critics attributed the focus to ego and hubris). This meant revamping counterterrorism and moving to an intelligence-based model of prevention rather than one based on prosecution.
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division, which existed prior to 9/11, was known mainly for driving VIPs around New York, one of the most popular destinations for foreign dignitaries and one that becomes very busy during the U.N. General Assembly. Before 9/11, the NYPD also faced certain restrictions contained in a 1985 court order known as the Handschu guidelines, which required the department to submit “specific information” on criminal activity to a panel for approval to monitor any kind of political activity. The Intelligence Division had a very limited mandate. When David Cohen, a former CIA analyst, was brought in to run the division, he went to U.S. District Court in Manhattan to get the guidelines modified. Judge Charles Haight modified them twice in 2002 and 2003, and he could very well review them again. His previous modifications allowed the NYPD Intelligence Division to proactively monitor public activity and look for indications of terrorist or criminal activity without waiting for approval from a review panel.
The Counter-Terrorism Bureau was founded in 2002 with analytical and collection responsibilities similar to those of the Intelligence Division but involving the training, coordination and response of police units. Differences between the two units are mainly bureaucratic and they work closely together.
As the capabilities of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and Counter-Terrorism Bureau developed, both faced the challenges of any new or revamped intelligence organization. Their officers learned the trade by taking on new monitoring responsibilities, investigating plots and analyzing intelligence from plots in other parts of the United States and abroad. One of their biggest challenges was the lack of access to information from the federal government and other police departments around the United States. The NYPD also believed that the federal government could not protect New York. The most high-profile city in the world for finance, tourism and now terrorism, among other things, decided that it had to protect itself.
The NYPD set about trying to detect plots within New York as they developed, getting information on terrorist tactics and understanding and even deterring plots developing outside the city. In addition to the challenges it also had some key advantages, including a wealth of ethnic backgrounds and language skills to draw on, the budget and drive to develop liaison channels and the agility that comes with being relatively small, which allowed it to adapt to changing threat environments. The department was creating new organizational structures with specific missions and targeted at specific threats. Unlike federal agencies, it had no local competitors, and its large municipal budget was augmented by federal funding that has yet to face cyclical security budget challenges. Looking for Plots STRATFOR first wrote about the NYPD’s new proactive approach to counterterrorism in 2004. The NYPD’s focus moved from waiting for an attack to happen and then allowing police and prosecutors to “make the big case” to preventing and disrupting plots long before an attack could occur. This approach often means that operatives plotting attacks are charged with much lower charges than terrorism or homicide, such as document fraud or conspiracy to acquire explosives.
The process of looking for signs of a terrorist plot is not difficult to explain conceptually, but actually preventing an attack is extremely difficult, especially when the investigative agency is trying to balance security and civil liberties. It helps when plotters expose themselves prior to their attack and ordinary citizens are mindful of suspicious behavior. Grassroots defenders, as we call them, can look for signs of pre-operational surveillance, weapons purchasing and bombmaking, and even the expressed intent to conduct an attack. Such activities are seemingly innocuous and often legal — taking photos at a tourist site, purchasing nail-polish remover, exercising the right of free speech — but sometimes these activities are carried out with the purpose of doing harm. The NYPD must figure out how to separate the innocent act from the threatening act, and this requires actionable intelligence.
It is for this reason that the NYPD’s Demographics Unit, which is now apparently called the Zone Assessment Unit, has been carrying out open observation in neighborhoods throughout New York. Understanding local dynamics, down to the block-by-block level, provides the context for any threat reporting and intelligence that the NYPD receives. Also shaping perceptions are the thousands of calls to 911 and 1-888-NYC-SAFE that come in every day, partly due to the city’s “If you see something, say something” campaign. This input, along with observations by so-called rakers (undercover police officers) allows NYPD analysts to “connect the dots” and detect plots before an attack occurs. According to the AP reports, these rakers, who go to different neighborhoods, observe and interact with residents and look for signs of criminal or terrorist activity, have been primarily targeting Muslim neighborhoods.
These undercover officers make the same observations that any citizen can make in places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Indeed, law enforcement officers from the local to the federal level across the country have been doing this for a long time, looking for indicators of criminal activity in business, religious and public settings without presuming guilt.
Long before the NYPD began looking for jihadists, local police have used the same methods to look for mafia activity in Italian neighborhoods, neo-Nazis at gun shows and music concerts, Crips in black neighborhoods and MS-13 members in Latino neighborhoods. Law enforcement infiltration into white hate groups has disrupted much of this movement in the United States. Location is a factor in any counterterrorism effort because certain targeted groups tend to congregate in certain places, but placing too much emphasis on classifications of people can lead to dangerous generalizations, which is why STRATFOR often writes about looking for the “how” rather than the “who.” Understanding New Threats and Tactics As the NYPD saw it, the department needed tactical information as soon as possible so it could change the threat posture. The department’s greatest fear was that a coordinated attack would occur on cities throughout the world and police in New York would not be ramped up in time to prevent or mitigate it. For example, an attack on transit networks in Europe at rush hour could be followed by an attack a few hours later in New York, when New Yorkers were on their way to work. This fear was almost realized with the 2004 train attacks in Madrid.
Within hours of the attacks, NYPD officers were in Madrid reporting back to New York, but the NYPD claims the report they received from the FBI came 18 months later. There was likely some intelligence sharing prior to this report, but the perceived lack of federal responsiveness explains why the NYPD has embarked on its independent, proactive mission.
NYPD officers reportedly are located in 11 cities around the world, and in addition to facilitating a more rapid exchange of intelligence and insight, these overseas operatives are also charged with developing liaison relationships with other police forces. And instead of being based in the U.S. Embassy like the FBI’s legal attache, they work on the ground and in the offices of the local police. The NYPD believes this helps the department better protect New York City, and it is willing to risk the ire of and turf wars with other U.S. agencies such as the FBI, which has a broader mandate to operate abroad. Managing Oversight and Other Challenges The New York City Council does not have the same authority to conduct classified hearings that the U.S. Congress does when it oversees national intelligence activity. And the federal government has limited legal authority at the local level. What Public Safety Committee Chairman Vallone and federal government sources are implying is that they are not willing to take on oversight responsibilities in New York. In other words, while there are concerns about the NYPD’s activities, they are happy with the way the department is working and want to let it continue, albeit with more accountability. As oversight exists now, Kelly briefs Vallone on various NYPD operations, and even with more scrutiny from the City Council, any operations are likely be approved.
The NYPD still has to keep civil rights concerns in mind, not only because of a legal or moral responsibility but also to function successfully. As soon as the NYPD is seen as a dangerous presence in a neighborhood rather than a protective asset, it will lose access to the intelligence that is so important in preventing terrorist attacks. The department has plenty of incentive to keep its officers in line. Threats and Dimwits One worry is that the NYPD is overly focused on jihadists, rather than other potential threats like white supremacists, anarchists, foreign government agents or less predictable “lone wolves.”
The attack by Anders Breivik in Oslo, Norway, reminded police departments and security services worldwide that tunnel vision focused on jihadists is dangerous. If the NYPD is indeed focusing only on Muslim neighborhoods (which it probably is not), the biggest problem is that it will fail in its security mission, not that it will face prosecution for racial profiling. The department has ample incentive to think about what the next threat could be and look for new and less familiar signs of a pending attack. Simple racial profiling will not achieve that goal.
The modern history of terrorism in New York City goes back to a 1916 attack by German saboteurs on a New Jersey arms depot that damaged buildings in Manhattan. However unlikely, these are the kinds of threats that the NYPD will also need to think about as it tries to keep its citizens safe. The alleged Iranian plot to carry out an assassination in the Washington area underscores the possibility of state-organized sabotage or terrorism.
That there have been no successful terrorist attacks in New York City since 9/11 cannot simply be attributed to the NYPD. In the Faisal Shahzad case, the fact that his improvised explosive device did not work was just as important as the quick response of police officers in Times Square. Shahzad’s failure was not a result of preventive intelligence and counterterrorism work. U.S. operations in Afghanistan and other countries that have largely disrupted the al Qaeda network have also severely limited its ability to attack New York again.
The NYPD’s counterterrorism and intelligence efforts are still new and developing. As such, they are unconstrained compared to those of the larger legacy organizations at the federal level. At the same time, the department’s activities are unprecedented at the local level. As its efforts mature, the pendulum of domestic security and civil liberties will remain in motion, and the NYPD will face new scrutiny in the coming year, including judicial oversight, which is an important standard in American law enforcement. The challenge for New York is finding the correct balance between guarding the lives and protecting the rights of its people.
WEBSITE: http://www.policeone.com/terrorism/articles/4507714-Growing-concern-over-the-NYPDs-counterterrorism-methods/
TERRORISM:
Articles For Urban Sprawl:
A comprehensive look at sprawl in AmericaBy Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY
Los Angeles, whose legendary traffic congestion and spread-out development have epitomized suburban sprawl for decades, isn't so sprawling after all.
sprawl (sprôl) v. To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion, n. Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from new housing on the outskirts of a city.
Worse than either of them is Nashville, which is the nation’s most sprawling metro of 1 million people or more.
Those are some of the findings of a USA TODAY study that analyzes population trends over the past decade in the nation’s 271 metropolitan areas.
Across the country, people are debating the issue of sprawl as governments try to reconcile growing needs for new housing and commercial development with demands to protect open space. The newspaper’s study shows why: 83% of metro areas are more sprawling now than in 1990.
To quantify sprawl, USA TODAY developed an index that analyzes how densely developed a metro is today and how that changed during the ’90s. The result is the USA TODAY Sprawl Index.
Some findings from the analysis defy conventional wisdom. The index shows that:
• A boom in population doesn’t necessarily trigger sprawl. In fact, sprawl can occur when the population in a metropolitan area is shrinking.
Other key findings:
• The availability of water is a major factor in limiting or allowing sprawl. For example, in a booming desert city such as Las Vegas, the scarcity of water forces development to stay close to the city’s edge — and its municipal water lines — and not leapfrog open space.
• Geography is another major factor limiting or allowing sprawl. Oceans, mountains and other barriers can force a metro to grow compactly while flat land can allow development of any kind.
The forces of water and geography are evident in the sprawl index. Sixteen of the most sprawling big metros are east of the Mississippi. Four of the top five are in the Southeast: Nashville; Charlotte; Greensboro, N.C.; and Atlanta.
• A lack of regional government planning can foster sprawl. In metros in the Northeast and Midwest, dozens of local governments regulate development. The result is fragmented planning. Efforts by local and state governments to restrict sprawl are growing but have had limited impact.
Measuring sprawl
The USA TODAY Sprawl Index is based on a simple, measurable definition of sprawl: population density. Each metropolitan’s index score is based on two density measurements:
• Population density today. Density is the percentage of a metro area’s population that lives in “urbanized areas.” The Census Bureau defines urbanized areas as those parts of a metro with 1,000 or more residents per square mile.
• Change in population density during the 1990s. The second component of the index measures how much a metro’s percentage in urbanized areas increased or decreased from 1990 to 1999.
The metropolitan areas were ranked 1 through 271 on each measurement (lower numbers represent less sprawl). The two rankings were added to produce each metro area’s sprawl index score. The highest possible score is 542; the lowest is 2.
For example, in the Louisville metro area, 76% of the population lived in urbanized areas in 1999. That gave Louisville a rank of 85 among the 271 metros. In 1990, 79.6% lived in urbanized areas. Louisville’s 4.5% drop during the ’90s gave it a rank of 221. Adding those two rankings of 85 and 221 produced a sprawl index score of 306. Of the 271 metros, 108 have higher numbers than Louisville, which means they sprawl more, and 162 have lower numbers and sprawl less.
More space than necessary?
Because sprawl occurs in different ways and at different rates across the country, it’s difficult for people and governments to agree on how to deal with it. When the non-profit Pew Center for Civic Journalism asked voters to name the most important problem in their community, sprawl and traffic tied for first with crime and violence. Each was cited by 18% of those surveyed. Issues such as education and health and medicine trailed far behind.
Robert Lang, director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation, says, “There’s a big public policy imperative to do something about what people call sprawl. It would be nice to have a definition.”
By using population density as the definition of sprawl, the USA TODAY index is able to rank a metropolitan area’s sprawl whether its population is increasing or decreasing. And comparing population density in 1990 and 1999 shows how metro areas are growing. Armed with that knowledge, government officials, developers and residents can debate what measures — if any — they should take.
A love-hate relationship
Across the country, the desire for new, affordable housing and commercial space creates sprawl. Cheap land outside urbanized areas allows people to buy their own homes. It also provides an escape for people who perceive only downsides to life in the city — from crime and low-quality public education to high housing costs.
•asthma and global warming — auto emissions
•flooding and erosion — too much pavement
• the demise of small farms — developers buying their land
•extinction of wildlife — natural areas being overrun by development.
Since 1997, 22 states have enacted some type of land-use law designed to rein in sprawl. In 1999 alone, lawmakers introduced 1,000 bills in state legislatures, and they passed more than 200. In fast-growing counties, people are electing “smart-growth” candidates to public office who advocate restricting development.
Americans are even willing to spend their money to protect green space. In the summer of 1999, eight homeowners in Warren Township, N.J., spent $125,000 to buy seven acres near their homes to keep the land wooded. Around the same time, about 400 families in the affluent Cleveland suburbs of Chagrin Falls and Bentleyville contributed $300,000 to preserve 62 acres.
Some free-market thinkers say the sprawl debate is much ado about nothing. The country has plenty of space, says Sam Staley, director of the Urban Futures Program for Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles. The 80% of Americans who live in metro areas should have the right to choose between a condo in the city and a home on a big lot in the suburbs.
“Quality of life. It starts with that,” Staley says. “Then the question becomes, ‘Does sprawl compromise quality of life?’ I don’t think it does because people are choosing to move to these communities all the time. There are alternatives to sprawl in every major city in the United States, but people are choosing not to return to those neighborhoods.”
As a result, sprawl remains a national dilemma. People are fed up with it, yet they like what it provides. And they don’t like the alternative to sprawl: Living in a more crowded urban environment.
As communities debate what to do about it, they can’t agree on what sprawl is, or even whether it’s good or bad. Sprawl is blamed for social isolation and obesity (people driving everywhere), asthma and global warming (auto emissions), flooding and erosion (too much pavement), the demise of small farms (developers buying their land) and the extinction of wildlife (natural areas being overrun by development).
At the same time, it is credited with creating safe neighborhoods, affordable housing and good schools. In short, a chance to live the American dream.
Natural barriers
A key finding of the sprawl index is the impact of geography and water. Mountains and other natural barriers and limited supplies of water have prevented many Western cities from sprawling; flat land and plentiful water have allowed most Eastern cities to grow as they please. As a result, most Western metro areas have fairly low sprawl index scores and many Eastern cities have high scores.
Mountains, oceans and other natural barriers also prevent development from spreading. Once a metro area butts up against them, its population can increase only if development becomes denser. Single-family lots become smaller, and condominium and apartment buildings go up.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area has a population of 16 million and seems sprawling to many. But if the Atlanta metro area (pop. 3.8 million) had as many people as Los Angeles and the same population density Atlanta has now, it would occupy many more square miles than Los Angeles does.
In the Atlanta metro region, 72.9% lived in urbanized areas in 1990, and by 1999, that figure had dropped to 67.4%. Throughout the ’90s, Atlanta continued to sprawl as people moving to Atlanta chose less-populated parts of the metropolitan area.
In Los Angeles, 94.9% lived in urbanized areas in 1990. By 1999, that percentage had dropped slightly, to 94.3%.
In the West, growth occurs in an orderly fashion because it’s tethered to those water lines. In the East, especially the Southeast, growth can be disorderly. Developers can buy cheap rural land and build on it because they don’t have to worry about public water and sewer facilities. This leapfrog development consumes vast amounts of land and traps green space — pastures, cropland and woods — between developments. A population that occupies 1,000 square miles in a metro area constrained by natural forces can occupy many times that in another.
This untamed ability to sprawl has produced rapidly merging metropolitan areas along I-85 and I-20 between Raleigh, N.C. (index score: 271), and Birmingham, Ala. (323). Development there has unfurled from big urban centers such as Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta to the rural towns in between.
“In general, you’ll find that the cities that look like the poster children of sprawl in the West are less sprawling than we think,” says Robert Lang, director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation.
The sprawl index list of big metros (pop. 1 million or more) especially shows how the availability of land and water has affected growth in the Southeast. Nashville (index score: 478) is No. 1 on the list. Charlotte (454); Greensboro, N.C., (437); and Atlanta (392) are in the top five. Four others are in the top 15: Memphis (329); Orlando (290); Raleigh (271); and Washington (261).
Miami-Fort Lauderdale (69) is a big metro in the region that is not high on the sprawl index. Miami shares the fate of cities in the West. Geography pins it into a 25-mile wide area between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades. It ranks on the sprawl index right above San Diego (66), which is confined to 30 miles between ocean and mountains.
The availability of cheap land in the Southeast and the Midwest also has turned many small metros (pop. 250,000 or fewer) into major engines of sprawl. These communities appeal to companies and individuals that want cheap land and want to escape the congestion of big metros. They’re also close to major urban centers — and their jobs, services and entertainment. Examples include Janesville, Wis. (263), west of Milwaukee, and St. Cloud, Minn. (231), which is just outside Minneapolis.
Man-made barriers
The effect of politics and government on sprawl can be seen best in metropolitan Portland, Ore. For years, Portland has fought to prevent the sprawl it saw shape Los Angeles. In 1973, Portland established an urban growth boundary to stop development and preserve open space beyond a certain line. The boundary encouraged denser development inside it.
“Las Vegas has an urban growth boundary. It’s called federal land,” says Bill Fulton of Solimar Research Group, an urban research and planning firm in Ventura, Calif.
Las Vegas’ population has grown 60% in the past decade to 1.4 million, but more than three-quarters of those new residents moved into urbanized areas. Las Vegas has experienced orderly growth. New development has occurred at the edge of old, rather than leapfrogging open space, as in Atlanta.
Powerful cultural forces
Racial tensions and urban decay fueled much of the flight to the suburbs in metro areas in the Midwest and Northeast. Today, those metros rank high on the USA TODAY Sprawl Index. On the list of big metros, Grand Rapids, Mich. (357); Indianapolis (299); and Cincinnati (292) rank among the top 15. They’re all highly segregated areas, according to several studies of Census data from 1990.
“By many measures, the Midwest has both the highest racial segregation and the most-concentrated poverty at the cores,” says George Galster, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “That centrifugal push makes it possible for developers to offer ever-more distant alternatives to ‘urban problems.’.”
Local politics also contributes to sprawl in these regions. In the Northeast, metros are made up of many municipalities, which makes it harder to develop a regional growth plan. The same is true in the Midwest, a region settled by Northeasterners who brought with them a tradition of town meetings and local control. Metro Detroit has 280 local governments; metropolitan New York has more than 560.
“Each of them can adopt their separate zoning and housing and land-use codes,” Galster says.
These disparate interests work against regional planning and promote sprawl. One municipality can restrict growth, but if a neighboring town welcomes it, sprawl continues.
Deceptive nature of sprawl
Often, the debate over sprawl and what to do — if anything — to control it comes down to perception. If you look out on Charlotte from a downtown high-rise, trees dominate the land outside the tight downtown skyline. But the forest is just an illusion because development is hidden beneath the foliage.
“People say, ‘Boston is the densest place I know,’ but you don’t see the two-acre and three-acre lots out in the suburbs because of the trees,” he says. “In Los Angeles, they see everything because there are no trees.”
Of course there are trees, but in a semiarid climate like Southern California’s, vegetation is not as naturally lush. In the West, any development on treeless hillsides is in plain view. Many Western cities also appear sprawling because of the way they are designed. Los Angeles has single-family homes stretching for miles. Away from downtown, few high-rises break up the monotony. “For some people, that’s sprawl,” says Rolf Pendall, a planning professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
But population density is the key determinant of sprawl. Those single-family homes in Los Angeles are on very small lots. In the East, older metropolitans appear to sprawl less because their packed, 19th-century cores and tall buildings form an image of density. But sprawl still exists. It’s just occurring miles from downtown.
“Sprawl is so multifaceted and takes on so many different forms across the country that it’s probably going to require different solutions,” Lang says.
Struggle for solutions
Everyone is pushing for “smart” growth, but no one can agree on what “dumb” growth is.
• George Galster, an urban planning professor at Wayne State University, is looking at six dimensions of sprawl, including the density and concentration of housing in various areas.
• Rolf Pendall, of Cornell University, is using an Agriculture Department survey taken every five years that measures how much land on the fringe of metropolitans is being developed.
Some say housing should be built close to mass transit and within walking distance of stores, schools and other services to get cars off the road. Others argue that Americans don’t want to live in a more crowded urban setting or give up their cars.
Some want strict growth boundaries. Others say that limiting development pushes up housing prices and reduces the stock of affordable housing.
They agree on one thing, though: Municipalities must plan better.
Faced with mounting pressure from residents, environmentalists and other interest groups and local officials, eight states have approved comprehensive, growth-management plans that require local governments to prevent development where roads and sewers don’t exist. In 1998, Tennessee required municipalities to set up urban-growth boundaries. In 1999, Georgia set up a regional transportation authority that has veto power over major construction in a 13-county area in and around Atlanta.
But most other states that have been dragged into a problem that’s usually left to local government are sticking to laws that get little resistance. They’re setting aside funds to buy open space, farmland or forests. Some are creating tax incentives for landowners to donate development rights to the state or conservationists.
Even as planners and elected officials grapple with sprawl, individual choices and lifestyles ultimately shape development in this country.
Latanya Wells, 37, grew up in inner-city Detroit and never thought of leaving.
“It was clean. You felt safe. People were neighborly,” she says. But over the years, her neighborhood steadily changed for the worse. By the time she finally left in 1997, “you barely knew your neighbors or spoke to your neighbors. There were bars on the windows.”
Wells, her sister and brother — all teachers in Detroit public schools — did what millions of Americans have done for decades: They moved to the suburbs. They briefly considered, but rejected, housing going up in some of the most distressed neighborhoods downtown, part of the city’s effort to bring people back to the city. “We looked around the neighborhood and thought: We’re going to be scared to go to our cars,” she says. “It’s still rough down there.”
They chose Southfield, 13 miles from their jobs in the city. An older suburb packed with strip malls and lookalike homes, Southfield is a sprawling eyesore to some. But not to Wells.
“It’s a matter of perception,’’ she says. “I like it.”
WEBSITE: http://www.usatoday.com/news/sprawl/main8.htm
URBAN SPRAWL:
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ARTICLES FOR TERRORISM:
Growing concern over the NYPD's counterterrorism methods
In response to the 9/11 attacks, the New York Police Department (NYPD) established its own Counter-Terrorism Bureau and revamped its Intelligence Division. Since that time, its methods have gone largely unchallenged and have been generally popular with New Yorkers, who expect the department to take measures to prevent future attacks.
Preventing terrorist attacks requires a very different operational model than arresting individuals responsible for such attacks, and the NYPD has served as a leader in developing new, proactive approaches to police counterterrorism.
However, it has been more than 10 years since the 9/11 attacks, and the NYPD is now facing growing concern over its counterterrorism activities. There is always an uneasy equilibrium between security and civil rights, and while the balance tilted toward security in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it now appears to be shifting back.
This shift provides an opportunity to examine the NYPD’s activities, the pressure being brought against the department and the type of official oversight that might be imposed.
Under Pressure Reports that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and Counter-Terrorism Bureau engage in aggressive, proactive operations are nothing new. STRATFOR has written about them since 2004, and several books have been published on the topic. Indeed, police agencies from all over the world travel to New York to study the NYPD’s approach, which seems to have been quite effective.
Criticism of the department’s activities is nothing new, either. Civil liberties groups have expressed concern over security methods instituted after 9/11, and Leonard Levitt, who writes a column on New York police activities for the website NYPD Confidential, has long been critical of the NYPD and its commissioner, Ray Kelly. Associated Press reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo have written a series of investigative reports that began on Aug. 24 detailing “covert” NYPD activities, such as mapping the Muslim areas of New York. This was followed by the Aug. 31 publication of what appears to be a leaked NYPD PowerPoint presentation detailing the activities of the Intelligence Division’s Demographics Unit.
In the wake of these reports, criticism of the NYPD’s program has reached a new level. Members of the New York City Council expressed concern that their constituents were being unjustly monitored. Six New York state senators asked the state attorney general to investigate the possibility of “unlawful covert surveillance operations of the Muslim community.” A group of civil rights lawyers also asked a U.S. district judge in Manhattan to force the NYPD to publicize any records of such a program and to issue a court order to prevent their destruction. In response to the AP investigation, two members of Congress, Reps. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Rush Holt, D-N.J., asked the Justice Department to investigate. The heat is on.
After an Oct. 7 hearing regarding NYPD intelligence and counterterrorism operations, New York City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Peter Vallone said, “That portion of the police department’s work should probably be looked at by a federal monitor.”
Following Vallone’s statement, media reports cited Congressional and Obama administration officials saying they have no authority to monitor the NYPD.
While Vallone claims the City Council does not have the expertise to oversee the department’s operations, and the federal government says that it lacks the jurisdiction, it is almost certain that the NYPD will eventually face some sort of new oversight mechanisms and judicial review of its counterterrorism activities.
New York City and the Terrorist Threat While 9/11 had a profound effect on the world and on U.S. foreign policy, it had an overwhelming effect on New York City itself. New Yorkers were willing to do whatever it took to make sure such an attack did not happen again, and when Kelly was appointed police commissioner in 2002, he proclaimed this as his primary duty (his critics attributed the focus to ego and hubris). This meant revamping counterterrorism and moving to an intelligence-based model of prevention rather than one based on prosecution.
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division, which existed prior to 9/11, was known mainly for driving VIPs around New York, one of the most popular destinations for foreign dignitaries and one that becomes very busy during the U.N. General Assembly. Before 9/11, the NYPD also faced certain restrictions contained in a 1985 court order known as the Handschu guidelines, which required the department to submit “specific information” on criminal activity to a panel for approval to monitor any kind of political activity. The Intelligence Division had a very limited mandate. When David Cohen, a former CIA analyst, was brought in to run the division, he went to U.S. District Court in Manhattan to get the guidelines modified. Judge Charles Haight modified them twice in 2002 and 2003, and he could very well review them again. His previous modifications allowed the NYPD Intelligence Division to proactively monitor public activity and look for indications of terrorist or criminal activity without waiting for approval from a review panel.
The Counter-Terrorism Bureau was founded in 2002 with analytical and collection responsibilities similar to those of the Intelligence Division but involving the training, coordination and response of police units. Differences between the two units are mainly bureaucratic and they work closely together.
As the capabilities of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and Counter-Terrorism Bureau developed, both faced the challenges of any new or revamped intelligence organization. Their officers learned the trade by taking on new monitoring responsibilities, investigating plots and analyzing intelligence from plots in other parts of the United States and abroad. One of their biggest challenges was the lack of access to information from the federal government and other police departments around the United States. The NYPD also believed that the federal government could not protect New York. The most high-profile city in the world for finance, tourism and now terrorism, among other things, decided that it had to protect itself.
The NYPD set about trying to detect plots within New York as they developed, getting information on terrorist tactics and understanding and even deterring plots developing outside the city. In addition to the challenges it also had some key advantages, including a wealth of ethnic backgrounds and language skills to draw on, the budget and drive to develop liaison channels and the agility that comes with being relatively small, which allowed it to adapt to changing threat environments. The department was creating new organizational structures with specific missions and targeted at specific threats. Unlike federal agencies, it had no local competitors, and its large municipal budget was augmented by federal funding that has yet to face cyclical security budget challenges.
Looking for Plots STRATFOR first wrote about the NYPD’s new proactive approach to counterterrorism in 2004. The NYPD’s focus moved from waiting for an attack to happen and then allowing police and prosecutors to “make the big case” to preventing and disrupting plots long before an attack could occur. This approach often means that operatives plotting attacks are charged with much lower charges than terrorism or homicide, such as document fraud or conspiracy to acquire explosives.
The process of looking for signs of a terrorist plot is not difficult to explain conceptually, but actually preventing an attack is extremely difficult, especially when the investigative agency is trying to balance security and civil liberties. It helps when plotters expose themselves prior to their attack and ordinary citizens are mindful of suspicious behavior. Grassroots defenders, as we call them, can look for signs of pre-operational surveillance, weapons purchasing and bombmaking, and even the expressed intent to conduct an attack. Such activities are seemingly innocuous and often legal — taking photos at a tourist site, purchasing nail-polish remover, exercising the right of free speech — but sometimes these activities are carried out with the purpose of doing harm. The NYPD must figure out how to separate the innocent act from the threatening act, and this requires actionable intelligence.
It is for this reason that the NYPD’s Demographics Unit, which is now apparently called the Zone Assessment Unit, has been carrying out open observation in neighborhoods throughout New York. Understanding local dynamics, down to the block-by-block level, provides the context for any threat reporting and intelligence that the NYPD receives. Also shaping perceptions are the thousands of calls to 911 and 1-888-NYC-SAFE that come in every day, partly due to the city’s “If you see something, say something” campaign. This input, along with observations by so-called rakers (undercover police officers) allows NYPD analysts to “connect the dots” and detect plots before an attack occurs. According to the AP reports, these rakers, who go to different neighborhoods, observe and interact with residents and look for signs of criminal or terrorist activity, have been primarily targeting Muslim neighborhoods.
These undercover officers make the same observations that any citizen can make in places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Indeed, law enforcement officers from the local to the federal level across the country have been doing this for a long time, looking for indicators of criminal activity in business, religious and public settings without presuming guilt.
Long before the NYPD began looking for jihadists, local police have used the same methods to look for mafia activity in Italian neighborhoods, neo-Nazis at gun shows and music concerts, Crips in black neighborhoods and MS-13 members in Latino neighborhoods. Law enforcement infiltration into white hate groups has disrupted much of this movement in the United States. Location is a factor in any counterterrorism effort because certain targeted groups tend to congregate in certain places, but placing too much emphasis on classifications of people can lead to dangerous generalizations, which is why STRATFOR often writes about looking for the “how” rather than the “who.”
Understanding New Threats and Tactics As the NYPD saw it, the department needed tactical information as soon as possible so it could change the threat posture. The department’s greatest fear was that a coordinated attack would occur on cities throughout the world and police in New York would not be ramped up in time to prevent or mitigate it. For example, an attack on transit networks in Europe at rush hour could be followed by an attack a few hours later in New York, when New Yorkers were on their way to work. This fear was almost realized with the 2004 train attacks in Madrid.
Within hours of the attacks, NYPD officers were in Madrid reporting back to New York, but the NYPD claims the report they received from the FBI came 18 months later. There was likely some intelligence sharing prior to this report, but the perceived lack of federal responsiveness explains why the NYPD has embarked on its independent, proactive mission.
NYPD officers reportedly are located in 11 cities around the world, and in addition to facilitating a more rapid exchange of intelligence and insight, these overseas operatives are also charged with developing liaison relationships with other police forces. And instead of being based in the U.S. Embassy like the FBI’s legal attache, they work on the ground and in the offices of the local police. The NYPD believes this helps the department better protect New York City, and it is willing to risk the ire of and turf wars with other U.S. agencies such as the FBI, which has a broader mandate to operate abroad.
Managing Oversight and Other Challenges The New York City Council does not have the same authority to conduct classified hearings that the U.S. Congress does when it oversees national intelligence activity. And the federal government has limited legal authority at the local level. What Public Safety Committee Chairman Vallone and federal government sources are implying is that they are not willing to take on oversight responsibilities in New York. In other words, while there are concerns about the NYPD’s activities, they are happy with the way the department is working and want to let it continue, albeit with more accountability. As oversight exists now, Kelly briefs Vallone on various NYPD operations, and even with more scrutiny from the City Council, any operations are likely be approved.
The NYPD still has to keep civil rights concerns in mind, not only because of a legal or moral responsibility but also to function successfully. As soon as the NYPD is seen as a dangerous presence in a neighborhood rather than a protective asset, it will lose access to the intelligence that is so important in preventing terrorist attacks. The department has plenty of incentive to keep its officers in line.
Threats and Dimwits One worry is that the NYPD is overly focused on jihadists, rather than other potential threats like white supremacists, anarchists, foreign government agents or less predictable “lone wolves.”
The attack by Anders Breivik in Oslo, Norway, reminded police departments and security services worldwide that tunnel vision focused on jihadists is dangerous. If the NYPD is indeed focusing only on Muslim neighborhoods (which it probably is not), the biggest problem is that it will fail in its security mission, not that it will face prosecution for racial profiling. The department has ample incentive to think about what the next threat could be and look for new and less familiar signs of a pending attack. Simple racial profiling will not achieve that goal.
The modern history of terrorism in New York City goes back to a 1916 attack by German saboteurs on a New Jersey arms depot that damaged buildings in Manhattan. However unlikely, these are the kinds of threats that the NYPD will also need to think about as it tries to keep its citizens safe. The alleged Iranian plot to carry out an assassination in the Washington area underscores the possibility of state-organized sabotage or terrorism.
That there have been no successful terrorist attacks in New York City since 9/11 cannot simply be attributed to the NYPD. In the Faisal Shahzad case, the fact that his improvised explosive device did not work was just as important as the quick response of police officers in Times Square. Shahzad’s failure was not a result of preventive intelligence and counterterrorism work. U.S. operations in Afghanistan and other countries that have largely disrupted the al Qaeda network have also severely limited its ability to attack New York again.
The NYPD’s counterterrorism and intelligence efforts are still new and developing. As such, they are unconstrained compared to those of the larger legacy organizations at the federal level. At the same time, the department’s activities are unprecedented at the local level. As its efforts mature, the pendulum of domestic security and civil liberties will remain in motion, and the NYPD will face new scrutiny in the coming year, including judicial oversight, which is an important standard in American law enforcement. The challenge for New York is finding the correct balance between guarding the lives and protecting the rights of its people.
WEBSITE:
http://www.policeone.com/terrorism/articles/4507714-Growing-concern-over-the-NYPDs-counterterrorism-methods/
TERRORISM: